With sales of over 200,000 units in its first week, Brotherhood can officially lay claim to enjoying the strongest ever launch week for an Assassin's Creed title. In fact, the game didn't fall that far short of chart topper Call of Duty: Black Ops, though Activision's shooter saw a week-on-week sales decline of over 80 per cent.

55 per cent of Brotherhood sales were for the Xbox 360 SKU, with PS3 claiming the other 45 per cent.

Sales of Ubisoft's game were significantly ahead of EA's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, though the new racer still claimed third in the weekly listing.

In many ways the real winner this week is Nintendo, which claims four games in the Top Ten – Wii party (sixth), Wii Sports Resort (seventh), Professor Layton and the Lost Future (eighth) and New Super Mario Bros Wii (tenth).